Sunday 21 April 2019

We were blessed with another rainy day. And as a result, the major Easter Sunday procession was cancelled. We assumed that this would be the case, but went to the procession route to be sure.  There was a crowd outside the church that was the start point for many of the processions, and people were coming and going from inside.  On the suggestion of the policeman who confirmed that the procession was off, we ventured inside. There was a large crush of people all looking at the various floats that have been made ready. The flowers, which are a notable feature of the floats here were incredible, and made the floats even more beautiful and dramatic. It was great to be able to see them close up. 

With no other Easter specific activities scheduled, we set to seeing the remaining Roman sites. This is the most Roman orientated place I have been to, outside of Rome itself. We visited the Forum area, where they have been excavating the public buildings, including bath houses, a temple, a tavern, and various houses.  Like all of the other remains these have only been discovered in the last 20 – 30 years. The museum was a delight to visit, there were well written descriptions of the areas in both Spanish and English, and it was possible to walk right into many of the rooms, on designated walkways.  The barriers to prevent you from walking onto the preserved areas were for the most part just inscriptions written on the walkway, so there was no unsightly modern ironwork to inhibit your views.  Some of the rooms in the houses still had the decorations visible and it was easy to imagine how lavish they would have been in their heyday.

Our next visit was to the Augustinium, a temple devoted to the worship of Caeser Augustus. This was largely indoor and I have not worked out if this was for protection or because it was actually underground.  This was less impressive than the other sites, as it consisted mostly of the bases of the walls, the higher parts have presumably been destroyed by the various conquering forces over that last 2 centuries.

Finally, we went to the Case Fortuna, and much larger and grander individual house. Here it was possible to get a good flavour of how the elite were living and the structure and complexity of their homes.

Distance covered today	0	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	99	nautical miles
Distance covered 2019	99	nautical miles
Steve (and Tricia)